The JioPhone with 4G-enabled features was introduced on 21 July 2017 at Reliance Industries 40th AGM. The JioPhone was launched at an “effective price” of Rs 0 and was made available for pre-booking from August 24, but due to huge demand, pre-booking process for JioPhone has been halted for few days.

Meanwhile, Jio has confirmed that millions have booked the JioPhone. Even though, no specific number has been stated yet, few reports claim that Reliance Jio received about six million pre-bookings for its 4G feature phone in a short window of just over a day.

The pre-order window which opened on August 24 evening had to be closed early on August 26 due to increasing customer demand and traffic on Jio’s official website. Apart from the one’s who were able to book their JioPhones online, reports confirm that about 10 million users have registered with retail outlets for offline bookings.

Reliance Industries Chairman, Mukesh Ambani, had announced during the annual general meeting that the company plans on selling five million JioPhones every week. And in another report, a source mentioned that the company has the capacity to deliver about 150 million phones in the next six months at five million devices a week.

As the demand for the Jio feature phone exceeded the initial target of five million phones per week, the telecom company decided to suspend the booking window from Saturday till further notice.

“Earlier JioPhone was supposed to reach our store around the first week of September. But now there will be some delay and JioPhone will arrive a little late,” says a Reliance Digital store retailer.

The JioPhone, as Mukesh Ambani announced, will be effectively for free with one time refundable deposit of Rs 1500 on return of the handset. To rival with the “India ka smart phone”, other telecom companies like, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone are also reported to be in talks with phone makers to introduce their own 4G smartphones in the Indian market.